If you take a walk alongside the railway between Loughborough Junction and Elephant and Castle
in South London you'll come to a street called Camberwell Station Road. Which is a little odd,
because there's no such thing as Camberwell station. There are stations in Camberwell. There's
Denmark Hill and the aforementioned Loughborough Junction, but neither of those are on this road.
And then you might notice this building. This here is (or was) the building for Camberwell station.
Here was the goods yard, and if you take the train, you might spot an odd sort of overgrown
bit with some brickwork where the platforms used to be. If you've ever travelled by train in South
London, like, say, you couldn't afford a proper holiday or something, you'll know that the railway
network down there is kind of crazy. There are lots of lines all over the place, but they don't
necessarily make much sense. This is because in the 19th century, there were three railway
companies that just went totally hog wild. You had the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway,
the South Eastern Railway and the London, Chatham and Dover Railway building lines just anywhere,
trying to get as many passengers as they could and ideally putting their rivals out of business. The
Thameslink line through this part of Camberwell was the work of the London, Chatham and Dover
railway, which was engaged in a rivalry with the South Eastern that was so fierce that the two
companies ended up nearly bankrupting themselves. Ironically, they ended up merging in 1899 into the
South Eastern and Chatham Railway. This line was something of a gamble for the London. Chatham and
Dover (or the Chatham line, as its friends called it). The Chatham line's main London
terminus was at Victoria, but in the late 1850s, word got out about a new railway line planned to
run from Farringdon in the City of London to Paddington. A railway through the metropolis.
A Metropolitan Railway, if you will. The London, Chatham and Dover had an idea, and quickly set
about coming up with a branch line to run from Herne Hill, up through South London, crossing the
river at Blackfriars and meeting the Metropolitan at Farringdon. This offered potential connections
with the Great Northern Railway, the Great Western Railway, the Midland Railway, the London and South
Western Railway, the London and North Western Railway and the London, Brighton and South
Coast Railway. The problem was the cost. If you think buying a flat in London is expensive, just
you try building a railway there. The railways this line would connect with agreed to chip in,
but it still had to be opened in sections. The section from Herne Hill to Elephant and Castle
(which included Camberwell) opened on the 6th of October 1862. To maximize their profits,
the Chatham boys built several stations along the route in the hope of getting commuter traffic.
Camberwell was one of those. Initially, there were only two tracks through here and two platforms.
Within four years, it was considered necessary to increase that to four tracks and four platforms.
There were also canopies and a subway connecting the platforms.
If you want to see what the station building looked like at its peak,
you could do worse than look at Elephant and Castle Thameslink station just up the line.
There was also a signal box and, as I mentioned earlier, a goods yard. Between 1863 and 1908 the
station was called Camberwell New Road. The line was popular but sadly, the station was not. Or
at least, not once the trams had arrived on the scene. South London really was tram country. Trams
were cheaper and more convenient than trains, even if they didn't have the speed advantage.
Those closely spaced commuter stations were becoming a bit of a financial liability.
The First World War gave the South Eastern and Chatham Railway, which the London, Chatham and
Dover was by now part of, the perfect excuse to get rid of some of their money-losing stations
under the pretext of wartime economy measures. Camberwell station was closed on the 3rd of April
1916 and never reopened. Oddly enough, the goods sidings hung around a lot longer, not
closing until 1964. They were mostly used by other companies (the ones this line connected with),
which I think shows the true financial value of the line. Time has not been kind to Camberwell
station. The platform buildings, apart from the signal box, were quickly demolished.
At some unknown point in time, the upper storey of the main building got knocked off.
It's since been converted into a garage, which involved knocking a huge hole in the front.
Every so often, there's talk of reopening the station. The problem is justifying
it. The argument for is that Camberwell doesn't really have a central station.
The argument against is that reopening the station would put three stations on the Thameslink line,
very close together, and it seems unlikely that passenger numbers would justify that
based on housing density. There have been many proposals to extend the Bakerloo line out here,
which seems like a more likely proposal for improving rail links.
South East London is an area that's starting to become more fashionable. But unless there's some
serious local development, I doubt any trains will be stopping at Camberwell any time soon.
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